Good Earnings for Medtronic

This morning, Medtronic ($MDT) reported its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings. Excluding special items, MDT made $1.10 per share which beat Wall Street’s consensus by seven cents per share. Frankly, this was a bit of a shock to me. I knew business was going well for Medtronic but this number was better than I was expecting.

Digging into the numbers, the big surprise was that sales of pacemakers and defibrillators rose. Pretty much everyone was expecting continued declines. Sales of defibrillators rose by 1.5%, and pacemakers were up by 2.6%. Company-wide, revenues were up by 3.8% last quarter. Medtronic’s CEO, Omar Ishrak, said that for the first time in 4-and-a-half-years, sales of defibrillators and spinal products rose in the U.S. in the same quarter.

For the year, Medtronic made $3.75 per share. That’s up from $3.46 per share in 2012. Some history: Last May, MDT originally saw earnings for this year coming in between $3.62 and $3.70 per share. In January, they raised the range to $3.66 — $3.70 per share.

For fiscal 2014, Medtronic projects earnings between $3.80 and $3.85 per share. Wall Street had been expecting $3.84 per share. Traders are very pleased with today’s news. Shares of MDT are up more than 6.5% this morning. The shares are at their highest point since September 2008.

Sometime next month, MDT will raise its dividend for the 36th year in a row.

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